Self-study
TLDR: Stuck in 155 rut for months, despite 171 BR, want to break into 160s, wondering whether something fundamental is missing or its just be like that. Highly appreciate any insight!
Study Time so far:
Studied full time mid July to start of September 2023, took 2 PTs got 142, 145, was using 2015 Kaplan book, good foundation for logic but meh strategies
September-October: Break
November 2023-Mid January 2024: studied full time with 7sage Tutor and Live classes, PTing 153-157, BR 161-167. Took Jan LSAT, got 150, # of practice hours hit 300 a few days before. Improvement from diagnostic which is nice, and even now feel like I've learned so much.
February to now (May): Studying part-time (9-15 hrs a week, 450 study hours so far) while working, still PTing 155 but doing August 2024 format and went from BR 165 a month ago to now BR 171, so understanding has been improving at least. Sometimes skim LSAT Trainer for exercises and tips, and focused heavily on 7sage curriculum, found Phenomenon-Hypothesis strategies extremely useful. Worse questions usually are Flaw and RC Sci/Law passages with ambiguous author opinion.
Currently focusing on perfecting LR 10 in 10 drills for a section's first 10 questions, and can get 80-90% right, but realistically need 100%. Working on paraphrasing questions, and being efficient and accurate for easy to medium questions, especially for flaw Qs, as I stand to gain the most points there. I also think practicing staying as calm as possible during sections is starting to help, because I tend to make mistakes on questions I find really easy without the time pressure, and rush in general.
Consistently 8-10 wrong on LR, but 7-12 on RC. Have got only 2 wrong on RC or LR sometimes but each on different PTs, would love to get both at once lol.
Considering everything, with a BR 171 and a 155 actual, it seems there's potentially huge room to improve timed, and I appreciate the skills I'm learning through the LSAT, but its still somewhat demotivating being stuck in the mid-150s since November, especially with an improving understanding through BR. Granted, studying has been part-time and LR/RC is slower to improve than LG, so who knows. Unsure what to do, as I consistently BR, journal in-depth about right/wrong answers, ways to improve, what I misunderstood. I try to only do a PT when I feel I've worked on a large number of drills for problem areas. Want to say its the time pressure stress, but still get cooked on harder LR sections even when super calm and highly accurate with the easier questions, but we'll see. Have considered more tutoring/live classes.
Highly value anyone's thoughts!
Thanks for reading!
Paraphrasing 17's stim, "based on what we know of bacteria, which would make it escape the AREA of a repellant"
B is wrong only because of the first reason JY described IMO, that we don't know the attractant's location relative to the repellent and the two's degree of overlap, so we dont know if it would actually accomplish the questions goal of escaping the area. We haven't necessarily escaped a nuclear weapon's radiation area just because we're attracted to pretty buildings that survived the blast. Those buildings could still have high radiation concentration no matter how close or far they were to the ones that were destroyed by the blast. Maybe the repellent's area is close to all-encompassing, thus rarely absent and hard to escape even with attractants to guide us.
Based off how I read the text, disqualifying B because "detects attractants" is vague/wishy-washy maybe overcomplicates things. I feel its strongly inferable from the passage that bacteria detecting attractants (whether through method 1 or 2) generally increases their likelihood to move towards them. This is an otherwise great answer choice that fails because it assumes the attractant's location and that's it, as annoying as it is.
In essence, it hard passes on "is this information supported" and fails on "does this achieve what the question wants"
E is right because it passes this 2 part test:
1. Is E supported by the passage.
Yes. We know that bacteria move in a similar way to what E describes with attractants, and from paragraph 1 we do know that repellents cause bacteria to move away, so its not crazy to hypothesize similar movement, even though its maybe more of a stretch than B was.
2. Does E achieve what the question wants
Yes, being repulsed by repellents would get you away from them, better than the location-dependent aspect of B.
E just passes on support, and hard passes on question goal.